Witches are popular inhabitants of children’s books. However, like most, perhaps all, historical witches, the Witch of Windermere was not a witch at all, but just an unfortunate woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Entertainment was scarce in Old England, and it was the popularity of witch burnings that kept the cult going for so long. So when the fishermen of Bowness found they were catching fewer fish in the great lake, they found a witch to blame for their misfortune, and their wives greeted the news with eager anticipation.
George, patron saint and minister for the environment, stumbled upon the situation on his way back from Scotland with his man, Jack. He had the misfortune to be seized by the mob and incarcerated in the accused witch’s cell, where he learned of the ordeal she would face on the morrow. It transpired that in those parts it was the custom to test a witch by tying her right thumb to her left big toe and throwing her into Lake Windermere. If she floated, she was judged to have rejected the holy water and to be a witch, but if she sank, she was judged to be innocent.
George sought a way to ensure that the woman would sink but it was the intervention of Jack and a pair of fire-breathing monsters emerging from the lake that eventually made possible her escape. One of the incendiary megafauna was a Loch Ness Nellie that George was bringing back from Scotland, but the second creature appeared to be native to the Lake and was reasoned to have been the cause of the fish famine. George petitioned the government in London, and the fishermen were paid a weekly allowance until the fish stocks recovered. George and Jack set out, in line with current legislation, to take the two biological blowlamps back to George’s menagerie in Gloucestershire where they could do no more harm.
They hadn’t gone far, however, when the Windermere Winnie wandered off during the night and the two monster minders had to break their journey to mount a search. They followed the absconder to a remote farm where they realised the creature had been reared from an egg and then introduced to the lake. And the person who had perpetrated this crime was none other than the accused witch. So she had really been responsible for the fishermen’s plight, concluded the patron saint and minister for the environment, but not by being a witch, only a grumpy green.
